ARIZONA!

i drove down with my mama last week. we couldn't figure out how to get the water on, so we stayed in a hotel for the first night. the next day we called the city and they showed up in only a few minutes to get our water going.
paint
paint
paint
the previous owners had HORRIBLE taste. the entire house is either pale orange or puke-blue. it's awful! so i'm repainting the entire thing. it's a lovely house, and it's in a lovely neighborhood, it just needs some new color and decor.
don't have internet yet.
i've been going to mcdonalds every other day to use their wifi. i also feel obligated to buy something when i spend time here - i'm also getting fat. hah.
it's HOT here.
it's already in the 90's BEFORE sunrise. then it's 115 - 120 during the day. yeesh.
but it'll be glorious the rest of the year.
the new ward is nice. very nice. i felt very welcomed the second i walked into the building on sunday.
oh, and somehow people find things out about me very quickly.
one of the sisters said she knew just by looking at me that i play piano. (weird?????)
i'm doing a musical number on sunday. haha, my records aren't even in yet.
dan is still in ut for his job. then he'll be here in a couple weeks. set up his office in one of the bedrooms and work from home!

so excited for everything.
school starts soon.
life starts soon.

so much to be happy about

we just went through all of the closing papers for the house. it's a HUGE stack of papers! why can't buying a house be easy like buying a car??
oh well. i'm soooooooo suuuuuper excited! closing is in a few days. and then we will be homeowners.
*sigh*
it all sounds so grown up. i feel like a child. well, i'm 22. i AM a child. haha.
and dan is 25, but he's just a kitten.

other things to be excited about:
dan's sister kathleen is getting married on friday! i like her a lot. actually, i like dan's whole family a lot. i'm very blessed to have found such a great guy from such a great family.

in june we will be going to california, taiwan, and indonesia with my family! it'll be dan's first time out of the country, and his first time meeting a lot of my family.
*side story: when dan got his passport my mom took one look at the picture and said "you look like a terrorist". thanks mom :)
i'm looking forward to this vacation, it'll be nice to get away from all the craziness here for a few weeks and relax and spend time with family. and go shopping!!! and my parents are paying for us to go as a graduation gift to me. they are very nice to us.

after that, the next big thing is moving to mesa.

oh man, i'm getting excited.
i'm also getting pretty nervous about starting school.
i've been out of school for a year, and let's be honest here, my study habits weren't that great to begin with. i hope i do well in the classes. but i've also been in a lab full time for a year. i'm excited to start new labwork.
i hope i make a good scientist.

i'm pretty jealous of dan. he's got a GREAT setup. he gets to work from home full time, which means he doesn't have to get dressed in the morning (something i hate doing, along with showers. i'm gross, i know.) and he gets to be with the puppies all day. oh ya, we're taking our dogs D and tomi with us!
but he also said he's excited about having time to cook dinner every night. something i am also happy about :D


summary:

we have a great life together <3

HUGE UPDATE!

so, it's been awhile. here's what we've been up to:

• we've been working like CRAZY. we like to get on insane save/make-money kicks. or maybe our whole marriage we've been on just one really big kick? probably.
• amanda picked up tutoring on the side. she currently tutors trig and genetics.
• dan has been working a lot of overtime AND manages to keep the apartment looking nice. and feeds amanda well.
  
• after being married for over a year we finally got our wedding video. it is perfect. i wanted to post it here, but it's too big.
  
  here's a link:
  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150089481135144&ref=nf
  
  
• amanda applied to graduates schools.
• amanda got interviews at the University of Utah and Arizona State University
• amanda got offers from both schools.
• team damanda searched, pondered, prayed, and made a whole lot of pro/con lists, and decided to go to arizona.
• dan found out he will be able to work from home no matter where we end up!
  
• dan has a potential raise coming as well.
• we went to arizona last weekend. friday we drove straight to pheonix after work, arrived at about 5am. saturday we spent the day looking at houses. saturday night we stayed at the nicest hotel dan has ever been to (but not the nicest hotel amanda's ever been to, because she's a spoiled little girl). we hot-tubbed. sunday we spent the day driving back to midvale.
• mon-wed: moving from our apartment to amanda's parents (to save money and avoid double house/rent payments) and getting approved for loans.
• today: made an offer on a house
• a couple of hours ago: got our offer ACCEPTED!

we'll be in arizona in august :)


more updates to come!!!

moustache.

you know what?

blogging is silly when you have a facebook and hardly enough life to fill even THAT up.
goodbye blog, i'll return when my life becomes eventful. or when i'm bored... like right now.

SCIENCE!

working full time is... full time. who would've thought?! i love my job though. right now i'm working on a gene mapping project. i did a suppressor screen last summer and found a cool mutation. it looked like it might be something we already know about - but it isn't! (yet, anyways). so i'm mapping it. it's super exciting :) hmmm... am i allowed to talk genetics here? jk. i won't bore you with silly details. but if you come over, don't be surprised if i force you to sit through a power point presentation of my work.

graduation, vegas, san rafael, more graduation

I graduated! yay!



B.S. in Biology, Minor in Music.
the ceremonies were ridiculously boring (and the talks were very cliche), but it was nice to walk around in my cap and gown and feel like i did something special :)

me and dan and jeni went to paris afterwards.



i mean, vegas. whatever.









it was a fantastic trip. we stayed at my aunt's house in henderson and hung out in her backyard pool. then we went to jeni's friend's wedding in boulder.
it was in the 90's the whole weekend. soooo nice!


the next weekend we went on a crazy camping trip at san rafael.
i almost died.

the hike:







it was super fun - but next time i'm going to need to work out before hand. i was definitely not prepared strength-wise.


the night we got back my mom threw me a graduation party!









the end.